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Of all the pictures you have taken over the years, which one touched you the most?
One is a giant swallowtail butterfly that I took on the Llano River in March of 2003. I was lying on my belly taking pictures of bluebonnets on my parent's property, about 12 miles west of Llano, when this swallowtail kept flying around me. After a lot of praying, it landed on the flower right in front of me (about six inches from the lens). I got about four or five photos before it flew away. Seven months later, on November 22, my sister was killed in a car wreck. Then my wife had a stroke on June 24, 2005 that left her permanently disabled. That is where the "vice" started, the photography turned into more than just a hobby, it became a passion and an income. I was doing an art show in Abilene a few years later when a lady asked me about the picture I had taken and if I knew what kind of butterfly it was. I told her it was a swallowtail and she began to tell me the story of her dad passing away a few years earlier, how it had snowed a few days later. She found a swallowtail outside covered in snow, brought into her house and after the snow melted it flew around her house for a few days. I asked her when her dad had died, she said November 22, 2003, the same day as my sister and her best friend had died. I told her God placed that butterfly on that flower at that exact time so we would meet.
The most recent happened when I was shooting a football game here in Llano and a young man broke his collar bone. A cheerleader asked if she could pray with him. I watched her drop to her knees . I snapped the photo and it became the number one viewed picture on my Facebook page.
The other one is not so inspirational… but I was about 30 miles north of Presidio, Texas when I came upon a camel eating on the side of the road. After taking the
four legged beast's picture I reached up and gave him a nice rub on the head, he proceeded to bite my hand with his one tooth and I really thought he had broken it. Presidio has no hospital so I had to drive myself back to Alpine where I had to explain what had happened at least a dozen times, they kept asking, "no really, what did you really do?"
What is your inspiration? Your drive?
I have one and only one inspiration, she is my life, my love and I would do anything for her. She is my lovely bride of 36 years. We met on a full moon in 1974, on a football field in Midland, Texas. She was sitting on the fifty yard line on the first Monday in August… howling at the full moon. I said "that's my woman!” She was born on April fool's day and we got married on Friday the 13th. I love her more than life itself.
I would assume that in your field, things happen that you just can't control. Weddings get rained out. You step in poo in the rodeo arena. What was the most crappy/comedic thing that has ever happened to you on a shoot?
I have been stuck in a shipwreck 78 feet under water in Cayman Brac, slid down the banks of the Llano river on my rear end on more than one occasion but I guess the worst thing I have seen was doing a family session in the bluebonnets last spring when the older of the two boys had placed some jelly beans in his nose. I suggested that he take them out and in the next few pictures he had placed the two jelly beans in his younger brother's hand who was now eating them, needless to say I had no lunch that day and I still can't eat a jelly bean.
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